Billibala

My Kindle cable cracked up

My Kindle is a little over 1 year old now. The Kindle itself is doing well. But the cable… the plastic cover has cracks developed and the plastic peels off. It looks a little terrible honestly.

Think I’ll probably have to get new cable for my trip to Taipei.

Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz Tells Michael Arrington to “Fuck Off”

I am never a TechCrunch fan. Didn’t know they did a TechCrunch Disrupt conference till I watch the This Week In Google podcast.

I don’t think Michael Arrington was doing that great in the interview. Actually, the atmosphere of the interview seem a little tense to me. So… Carol did drop the f-bomb. But the more interesting thing is her response to Michael’s question….

Carol Bartz: You are involved in a very tiny company.

Michal Arrington: Very tiny.

Carol Bartz: And it probably takes a long time to even convince yourself what the hell to do. I don’t want to hear any crap [...] about something magical that the fine people of Yahoo are supposed to do in this short time so fuck off. [...] That one I meant.
(transcript from huffington post)

Well, Michael, please check how you perform in the CrunchPad thing… You give up.

My respect to Carol! (don’t forget to check the video!)

Apple is now No. 1 in tech (market cap)

Apple is the No. 1 tech company in market value! Damn… we are no longer the niche…

Wired on iPad

Wired Magazine’s iPad edition goes live

Met 9Gag Brian this evening in CocoaHeads Meetup. He showed me Wired Magazine on iPad! Looking good!

Is Google really trying to save us from Apple?

In the video, Vic explains why Google has to do another mobile operating system in Google I/O 2010 Day 2 keynote – “… If we did not act, we faced a draconian future, where one man, one company, one carrier would be our only choice…”. Sounds familiar – 1983 Apple Keynote.

Well, I really doubt Google’s virtue. They acquired the “Android” company back in 2005 – Google Buys Android for Its Mobile Arsenal. FYI, iPhone was released in 2007. Eric Schmidt served in Apple’s board between 2006 and 2009.

A mild recognition which means so much

Headnix has got mentioned by ZDNet in the US. Blogger David Morgenstern featured Numbric and Finger in his post “Apps that turn your iPhone/iPod Touch into an external peripheral”. The post is more a featured mention rather than a detail review. In the post, he highlights the major motive why we create Numbric and Finger which is to serve people’s need in numeric data and Chinese character input.

You can find the post in The Apple Core – the blog section of ZDNet focusing on Mac, iPhone and other Apple related stuff.

This is my first. My first time being mentioned by mainstream US tech media. David is complete stranger to me. (He’s in my 3rd degree connection according to linked-in though) The fact that a pro-tech blogger/journalist stumbled upon my apps and decided it’s worth making them a featured mention in his blog post is such a great recognition and encouragement to me.

This is very much like saying “Headnix can deliver great products!!”

You may think I exaggerate the incident. It’s just a blog post anyway. They post dozens of post every week. Let me explain a little bit….

Headnix is totally an indie Mac company. We don’t have any funding from VC or government. Everything we do is pure and organic. We simply love the apps we develop and we hope people like them too.

Developing a product is not easy. While writing tablet and wireless number pad are not new ideas, my interface designer and I did put a lot of effort in a lot of details… Say, why Numbric is in landscape? What makes Finger (and Numbric too) so easy to setup? And more…

The process of developing Finger and Numbric is a typical tough indie story. On one hand, you need to take project from clients keep cash flow healthy. On the other hand, you need to squeeze time coding Finger and Numbric. Can you imagine how bad it is… you work over night to get client’s work done by deadline. Then, in weekend and other free time, you code your own product. In some months, because you are too busy with coding, you don’t get time to work on sales and pitches and you end up having very very little income for a month or so…

You need a lot of love and commitment to what you are doing!

Tomorrow is my 30th birthday. Having a recognition by a pro tech media at this milestone… man… I really can’t tell how complicated the feeling is…

Just wanna thank my parents, Bonnie and Belle who trust my ability building great applications even before anything is done. Dr Andrew Choi, my most respected professor who taught me C/C++ programming in HKU and, most importantly, converted me to Mac. All my buddies who spent nights with me for beer and coffee brainstorming and refining ideas. Last but not least, BeansBox team and Vanilla Design team for the contribution to user interface design/web design/marketing for Finger and Numbric respectively.

BTW, if you wanna read in-depth review, you can check out posts by Vinko for Finger and Numbric.

Cupidtino Ad

Cupidtino “Date A Mac” Apple Ad

In case you don’t know what Cupidtino is…. it’s a dating site for Apple fanboy and gal. The ad is so so so geeky… (and cheesy…) Can’t take it any longer XD

The 404 Podcast #581: Where we try to eat the meat off the chicken feet

The 404 Podcast #581

What’s your favorite Chinese dim sum? Shrimp Dumping? Cha Siu Bun? Or, chicken feet (鳳爪)?

The 404 podcast talks about Chinese dim sum earlier. The first segment is hilarious

First independent Numbric review

The first independent of Numbric is out! The review is posted in “Vinko’s Thoughts On…” blog – Review: Numbric on iPhone. Vinko is a tech blogger in Hong Kong. You can find him on twitter @vinko. Check out what he thinks about Numbric from the post.

Pecha Kucha Hong Kong #10 – failed

Went to Pecha Kucha Night Hong Kong #10. Well, I went to this event series for several times already. It’s just getting worse and worse…

Reasons:

1. The presentation sucks – most speakers simply can’t tell a story. “This slide is… “, “Now, here’s the logo of…”, “I design this in…” They run each single slide. They talk about the slide. But they are not telling story.
2. People don’t understand the runs – It’s 20 images each for 20 seconds. Feel the beat! It’s not asking you to cramp as much as you can in 20 sec. It’s about the pace.
3. Attendees are confused – some speakers speak in Chinese, some speak in Chinese at the beginning and switch to English in the middle, some speak Chinese with several English words in it… It’s just confusing to people. I can’t get a word from their saying.

I run the CocoaHeads event in Hong Kong. I understand that the speech quality is, very often, not in the host’s hand. A guest can be very good at its expert domain but sucks in public speaking.

But… there’s some basic things we can do about it…

• Remind the speaker to prepare early
• Remind the speaker to follow the rule – say, in CocoaHeads, presentation must be done in 20 minutes.
• Ask speaker to watch some good presentations. Learn from the great people!
• Make a language choice – present in the language the speaker is comfortable with and tell people, in the event post, the language of the presentation. People can choose to come or not.
• Short rundown – think keeping the whole event rundown to under 60 min makes better sense. People come to the event after a long work day. Inspire them with great speeches but leave LOTS OF time for them to chill!!

I will probably still go for Pecha Kucha event in Hong Kong cause I still wanna meet designers. But I’ll set my expectation to the speeches very very low.